16/2/98
Dimona:
Paris of the Negev
It may be the only non-haredi town in the country
where schoolchildren are taught Yiddish.
Dimona's like that.
What they meant to do, when they christened ג€Baba Sali
Street,ג€ was to tip a hat to one sector of the local population.
Thing is, it's not the Moroccans who live there, it's the Russians,
which is why everyone calls it Baba Stalin. (If you don't mind
living next to a cemetery, you can buy an apartment there for
$25,000.)
That's Dimona for you.
Folks here have their various mystic gurus; if it's blind
faith they seek, they turn to one baba or the other. But when
they want some serious rabbinical action, they turn to the chief rabbi.
He's from Brooklyn.
Dimona.
Over at Unemployment Cafe, David Ben-Lulu is mad at the
world. He's got his special place here, second table from the
door, the chair by the pillar. If you're thinking of opening
a new corporation in Dimona, and need a chief executive, pop
by the cafe; David's willing to listen.
Until that happens, David is content to sit here
and be angry. He's been doing it every working day for 10 years, and he's only 35. He's become quite
the professional unemployee. He said he was willing to speak
to a journalist about his plight -- and then pulled out a price
list.
How does a young man make do without a job for that
long? Like the other scowling denizens of Unemployment Cafe
(real name: Independence Cafe, which amounts to the same thing),
he thanks his lucky stars he lives here.
ג€Know what we have that you can't find anywhere else?
Each other,ג€ says Shlomo, and a round of brotherly backslapping
ensues.
It's Dimona's old-boy network: if you've been here
long enough, and you're from Morocco, you're in. If you're Russian,
you're out. ג€Maybe in 50 years, after a couple of generations,
that'll change,ג€ says Danny, 29, who works at the cafe. There
is no apparent malice in their attitude towards the newbies
who've come and snapped up jobs, but Dimona's old stock hasn't
exactly rolled out the red carpet either. It's human nature
for an ilk to stick together, and anyway, the Russians haven't
suffered long enough yet.
The founding tribe has its own support network, because
they understand, they all have the same knife stuck in their
backs, they've all been left to fester in a forgotten desert
outpost.
ג€You ever been to Dimona before? No?ג€ ponytailed
Shlomo sighs sadly. ג€Ahh, this used to be called 'the Paris
of the Negev.ג€™ '' David sneers that ג€now it's the Chernobyl
of the Negev.ג€
So what happened?
ג€All the money that should have come here, went to
the settlers instead. Instead of opening new factories, they're
closing the ones we've got. Except for the 'dirty' ones. Now
they're bringing us Hiriya [Tel Aviv's garbage dump]. Bloody
Likud.ג€
Everyone growls in agreement.
ג€It's a labor camp, this city,ג€ Nissim adds, and
the others jump down his throat. ג€It's a workers' town,ג€ the workless correct him.
Dimonans are touchy about their town's reputation.
They've taken charity from philanthropic British Jews only after
it was made clear they don't need charity. They bristle at the
thought that a Tel Avivian might see Dimona as a dusty dumping
ground for lolling Moroccans who'd sell their mothers to be
able to strut down Sheinkin Street. Whatever their town may
or may not be, they're proud of it.
Still, Tel Aviv it's not.
Having sipped enough coffee with enough colorful
locals, I was ready for a
change of pace: lunch, quietly.
I wondered where one might find a decent restaurant.
As if I didn't know that Dimona's restaurants close at lunchtime.
Fortunately, my chaperone, ex-Londoner Esther Suissa, knows
of a nice Nabatean eatery just outside city limits. Unfortunately,
it only caters to large groups, which she and I were not. (Eventually,
we did find a warm grill. We had no trouble getting a table.)
PITY I visited Dimona on a Sunday, Esther says. ג€Tuesday is couscous day, Monday
if you're Tunisian.ג€ She's well regarded around town, and could
have knocked at a door and got us a plateful. If only I'd known.
Esther, 29, has been in Dimona long enough to rationalize
its irrationalities, and still British enough that her perceptions
are wryly understated. ג€People here go home for lunch, and we
don't get a lot of tourists. So why should a restaurant stay
open for lunch? If people want to go out, they go out of Dimona.ג€
That's not to say there's nothing to do here. ג€Wednesday
is Shuk Day. That's big. But the main social event of the week
is on Thursdays. You get dressed up and go to the supermarket.ג€
When the first traffic light was installed in the
spring of 1997, Dimona drivers welcomed it by having three accidents,
at that very spot, on the first day.
Everyone forgot it was there.
They may have been going home to their villas. Now
remember, this is not Savyon: Dimona's few modest villas are
owned not by wildly successful moguls, but by workers who've
held onto a job at the nuclear plant or the Dead Sea Works.
Or they may have been going in the other direction, to Shechunat
Ledugma (Model Neighborhood). It was originally named, in the
'50s, for the lofty example it was supposed to set for subsequent
neighborhoods. It's a little embarrassing, like a man named
Small growing to two and a half meters tall, that it still retains
that name.
Maybe they were distracted by trying to remember
where they live. Address chronology is not an exact science
here: Block 1012 is next to 1035; on bleak Hanitzahon (Triumph)
Street, consecutive homes are numbered 13, 14, 22, 35, 36, 37.
Dimona, Dimona.
You want your children to learn Yiddish? Move to
Dimona. The language, long-forgotten like the town, is part of Yoseftal School's unusual cross-culture
program. Almost 200 Sephardi and Ashkenazi pupils aged six to 12 are taught
both Moroccan Arabic and Yiddish, and corresponding cultures.
ג€Studies have shown that conflict between the children has dropped
since this program was started,ג€ Esther says.
Maybe Danny is wrong; maybe it'll take less than
two generations of stirring to combine these disparate communities.
If the Moroccans are the main course, and the white
Russians and Black Hebrews the side dishes, that plate of pickled
turnips nobody ever eats is the
Anglos. Esther, a momma of three-year-old triplets, is one of about a dozen
English-speakers here (including her sister and parents). They don't cling together as an identity entity; if they're here, it's almost certainly because
they're married to a local, and they converted to his or her culture. There
is no Dimona English Speakers Solidarity Association.
Still, it's an English speaker everyone seems to
love the most. Rabbi Yitzhak Elefant, the fortyish Ashkenazi
chief rabbi, is adored by every last soul, perhaps because he
is unlike so many Israeli rabbinical leaders: he serves the
people, rather than the other way around. He is unimposing,
uncontroversial, apolitical. ג€My own family doesn't know how
I vote,ג€ he told me.
With his heavy black-rimmed glasses and neatly trimmed
beard he looks both studious and worldly, Orthodox and modern.
He is humble, and can afford to be, the glowing way his townsmen
speak of him.
Maybe because Dimona does not have its own baba,
these people have reached beyond Netivot, all the way to Brooklyn,
to find one they can call theirs.
The Baba Elefant.
Only in Dimona.
